YONKERS, NY — A Consumer Reports review of medical board websites in all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that Hawaii earned one of the lowest ratings in the country for failing to provide the public easy access to the disciplinary records of doctors licensed to practice in the state. As a result, Hawaii residents face a challenging time finding out whether their doctor has been put on probation for misconduct, made malpractice payouts, or been convicted of crimes.

“Patients have a right to know whether their doctor has been disciplined for bad behavior, especially when it could endanger their health,” said Lisa McGiffert, Director of Consumer Reports’ Safe Patient Project. “But Hawaii makes it very hard to find out if a doctor practicing in the state has a history of harming patients or putting them at risk.”

The review of medical board websites is featured in “What You Don’t Know About Your Doctor Could Hurt You,” the cover story of the latest issue of Consumer Reports. The article highlights some of the challenges patients face when checking up on doctors and includes tips for helping consumers find a good physician and what to do if they have been harmed during treatment.

Medical boards are state government agencies responsible for licensing and disciplining doctors and investigating complaints about them. While most doctors have clean records, thousands of doctors around the country have been put on probation by state medical boards for a variety of offenses, including sexual misconduct, drug and alcohol abuse, overprescribing controlled substances, and other unprofessional or dangerous practices. Most of these doctors are allowed to continue seeing patients.

In addition, doctors can be disciplined by the hospitals where they work for misconduct or by federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies for such offenses as Medicare fraud, abusing prescription drugs, or drug related crimes. Doctors who harm patients also can be the subject of malpractice suits.

Consumer Reports and the Informed Patient Institute, a nonprofit group that provides consumers with information about healthcare quality and cost, analyzed medical board websites to see whether they provided easy access to complete information about doctors, rating them on a scale of 1 to 100. The Hawaii Medical Board’s website received a score of 22, among the lowest in the country.

Hawaii’s Medical Board makes it relatively difficult to search for a doctor’s profile on its website by failing to use simple language on its homepage directing users how to search for a doctor’s profile. The homepage features a “Verify if a Person is Licensed” link, which may not be as obvious to users as more consumer friendly language like “Find a Doctor” or “Doctor Profile.” The site only allows searches by name and license number (which is not known by most users).

While Hawaii’s Medical Board website provides a plain language description of its complaint process, it doesn’t enable patients to submit complaints online or feature a “Frequently Asked Questions” page to help users understand what kind of information is available on the website and how to access it.

Hawaii provides only basic information about doctors, including their full name and the status of their license. Its website omits important information such as the physician’s specialty and whether they are licensed in other states, and doesn’t identify which information in their profile was verified by the Board.

Like other states, Hawaii doesn’t include information about complaints made against doctors on its profiles. But it was the only state where Consumer Reports was able to find some complaint and outcome information about doctors on a separate website, which also included this information about other licensed professionals. This is important information for consumers and should be included in the medical board’s doctor profile.

Hawaii received only fair marks for the information it provides about the disciplinary actions taken by the Medical Board against doctors licensed in the state. While the website lists all disciplinary actions taken by the Board going back ten years or more, it does not provide a plain language summary of the actions it has taken or a link to the Board’s orders detailing the evidence it considered and the action it took.

Finally, the Hawaii Medical Board received poor marks for not posting a doctor profile on its website that provides a full picture of each licensed doctor’s history, including information about disciplinary actions against the doctor taken by hospitals and the federal government, malpractice payouts, and whether the doctor has been convicted of any crimes.

To help ensure patients can find out whether their doctor has a history of misconduct more easily, Consumers Union urged all state medical boards to adopt a number of reforms to help make their websites more consumer-friendly, including:

Include a plain language summary of any disciplinary actions taken by the medical board on a physician’s profile that includes the date, reason, duration, and restrictions tied to the order, as well as links to documents with more detailed information.

In addition to board disciplinary orders, provide more comprehensive information on all physicians, including information about malpractice lawsuits, disciplinary actions taken by hospitals and federal agencies, and criminal convictions.

Allow the public to file complaints online and provide clear information about how complaints are handled, including expected time frames and when and how the complainant will be notified of the outcome.

While these kinds of website improvements will make it easier for consumers to check up on their doctors, Consumers Union has urged medical boards to require doctors on probation to inform their patients. “The onus shouldn’t be on patients to investigate their physicians,” said McGiffert. “Doctors on probation should be required to tell their patients of their status.” A Consumer Reports survey found that 82 percent of consumers are in favor of requiring doctors to tell their patients if they are on probation and why.

At the national level, Consumer Reports has advocated for the National Practitioners Data Bank, a federal repository that includes information about disciplinary actions taken by state medical boards, hospitals, as well as malpractice payments, to be open to the public. Only hospitals, doctors, law enforcement, insurance companies, and a few other select groups are currently granted access. Medical Boards should also have free access to the Data Bank when checking on licensed doctors.